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Theses/Dissertations

Discourse

American Politics

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Grassroots Diplomacy And Vernacular Law: The Discourse Of Food Sovereignty In Maine, John Welton May 2017

Grassroots Diplomacy And Vernacular Law: The Discourse Of Food Sovereignty In Maine, John Welton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the discourse of food sovereignty in Maine, a coalition of small-scale farmers, consumers, and citizens building an alternative food system based on a distributed form of production, processing, selling, purchasing, and consumption. This distribution occurs at the municipal level through the enactment of ordinances. Using critical-rhetorical field methods, I argue that the discourse of food sovereignty in Maine develops a ‘constitutive’ rhetoric that composes rural society through affective relationships. Advocates engage the industrial food system to both expose its systemic bias against small-scale farming and construct their own discourse of belonging. Based upon agrarian values such as …


The Syrian Refugee Crisis: A Rhetorical Analysis Of President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, And President Donald J. Trump’S Political Discourse About Syrian Refugees, Erin Lionberger Jan 2017

The Syrian Refugee Crisis: A Rhetorical Analysis Of President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, And President Donald J. Trump’S Political Discourse About Syrian Refugees, Erin Lionberger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I introduce the reader to sixteen texts of political discourse about Syrian refugees from three rhetors; President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and President Donald J. Trump. As the Syrian refugee crisis continues to grow, political leaders and citizens around the world debate the appropriate way to provide aid to those fleeing Syria. I rhetorically analyze multiple texts from each of these politicians’ and their use of framing, ideographs and metaphors within their political discourse. In my research, I suggest that the framing language used by each rhetor about Syrian refugees has varying impacts on the audience. The …